Originally from Buffalo, New York, Maggie came to New Orleans in 2011to serve as an Americorps volunteer with City Year New Orleans. For two years she worked as a full-time tutor and mentor of over-age students at an alternative high school, and then as a Team Leader, supervising a City Year team at a local elementary school, and partnering with community organizations on community-informed outreach.
One of the important partnerships Maggie created in Americorps was with the local non-profit, Resurrection After Exoneration (RAE). RAE's mission is to assuage the challenges faced by our wrongfully convicted and formerly incarcerated people, engage local youth, and raise awareness of miscarriages of justice. This experience is the foundation of her doctoral work which has focused on wrongful convictions and social notions of innocence and guilt.
Maggie’s dissertation, “Shaky Convictions: The social-medical-legal nexus of Shaken Baby Syndrome” investigates the role of socially steeped ideas of “good” and “bad” parents and homes in child fatality cases– specifically how criminal law and procedure operate on, and codify social stereotypes, reflected in case outcomes and sentences that disproportionately punish already marginalized families.
In her free time Maggie enjoys bike rides, crafting, and rock shows.
Publications:
Rafail, Patrick and Margaret Mahoney. 2018. “A Long Road to Freedom: Evidence, Race, Place, and the Exoneration Pipeline in the United States, 1989-2015.” The Sociological Quarterly.
Teaching:
SOC 2010- Foundations of Sociology
